Jacksonville Panel To Assess Future Of Busing Plan

School and civic leaders in Duval County, Fla.--widely considered
one of the most successfully desegregated districts in the country--are
studying the possibility of dismantling the district's court-ordered
busing plan and sending children to neighborhood schools.

Herb A. Sang, the county's superintendent of schools, this month
appointed a 27-member committee, made up of representatives from
several community groups, to study the future of desegregation in the
99,000-student district, which includes Jacksonville.

Changing Patterns

The committee, which is to hold its first meeting within a few
weeks, will examine the implications of neighborhood schools in light
of changing housing patterns. The group has no fixed schedule, but Mr.
Sang said he expects a recommendation within a year.

"It could be adjustment in what we're doing, it might be
elimination, or it might be doing nothing--just leaving it as it is,"
he said.

The superintendent said he is a strong supporter, for educational
reasons, of neighborhood schools--which have never existed in
Jacksonville because prior to desegregation, children were bused out of
their neighborhoods to attend one-race schools.

Mr. Sang maintains that, after 11 years of busing, all vestiges of
discrimination have been eradicated from Duval County's schools and
that the county's uniform curriculum ensures equal educational
opportunity for students in all schools.

Similar Steps

At least three other sizable districts that have been under busing
orders have tried or are considering similar steps.

The school board in Norfolk, Va., has asked its superintendent and
administrative staff to examine the possibility of returning to
neighborhood elementary schools after 11 years of busing.

In Boston, the lawyer for the black plaintiffs in the city's
desegregation suit is advocating a "freedom-of-choice" plan to replace
the mandatory student-assignment scheme now in place. The plan would
have to be agreed to by several parties to the suit, who are trying to
work out a final consent decree.

And in Denver, the only such effort to go to court so far failed
last month when U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch rejected the
school board's proposal that an open-enrollment plan be substituted for
the mandatory student-assignment plan that has been in use since the
early 1970's.

Mr. Sang, however, does not consider the Denver decision an obstacle
to broad changes in the way students are assigned in Jacksonville.

"What we're doing is somewhat different," he said. "We're working
with the entire community. If we can come to mutual agreement among
this particular group, it seems to me that a federal court is going to
be hard-pressed to take [the opposite] stand once it has been given a
neutral overview by a cross-section of the community."

Two Representatives

The committee, which will be headed by a prominent local lawyer,
includes two representatives of the local branch of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (naacp)--the
organization that originally filed the desegregation suit, Mims v.
Duval County Board of Education.

One of Mr. Sang's appointees, Willye F. Dennis, chairman of the
local naacp's education committee, said the organization would have no
comment until the superintendent has submitted a formal plan in
writing.

"We have to be so careful not to create a new problem while we're
trying to solve a problem," Ms. Dennis said. "I don't know what we're
going to do, because I don't know exactly what he has in mind."

Ms. Dennis said the naacp "knew this was coming, and we prepared
ourselves for it," but declined to elaborate.

Large Burden

One of Mr. Sang's contentions--with which Ms. Dennis said she does
not necessarily agree--is that the busing plan places a
disproportionately large burden on black children.

Busing was necessary to eliminate illegal segregation in
Jacksonville and "has served its purpose well," the superintendent
said. "But we must continue to weigh whether or not the remedy reaches
the point where it's more of a liability to students than a benefit.
... No remedy is intended as permanent. It should be evaluated in terms
of the present."

Of the 43,000 Duval County students who ride buses to school each
day, some 18,000--more than half of them black--are transported solely
for purposes of desegregation. About 34 percent of the county's
students are black; the enrollment in an individual school may vary
substantially from that average.

An informal, preliminary analysis of housing patterns shows that
very few neighborhoods are more than 90-to-92 percent black or white,
Mr. Sang said. But he conceded that there are "some isolated instances"
of total housing segregation that might result in some one-race
neighborhood schools.

The superintendent argued, however, that the district's uniform
curriculum and its emphasis on academics are so strong that any child
can receive a good education at any school in the county, regardless of
the student's race or that of his classmates. (In the past four years,
the test scores of Duval County's students have moved from 62nd among
Florida's 67 school districts to near the top.)

Benefits Outweigh Burdens

And now that the system has shored itself up academically and can
offer high quality to all students, Mr. Sang contended, the educational
benefits of neighborhood schools may outweigh the burdens of
busing.

Many working parents, the superintendent said, cannot always see
that their children arrive at the bus stop on time; as a result, many
students who run a few minutes late in the morning miss entire days of
school. "These kids can't afford to miss school," he added.

Furthermore, Mr. Sang said, the district's data show that students'
achievement has a strong relationship to parental involvement in
schools and to students' extracurricular activities.

"The farther away they live [from the schools], we find a direct
decline in parental involvement and student involvement," Mr. Sang
said. "It isn't the busing itself, it's the distance."

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